Connecticut has bestowed more than $500 million on businesses in loans and tax credits over the last decade to create and retain jobs, but many of the deals have not produced the promised jobs, and penalties assessed by the state when goals are missed are usually small.

[snip]

[D]espite the huge money spent on economic development, the number of jobs in Connecticut has actually declined since 2000. According to statistics published by the state Department of Labor, Connecticut had 1,673,134 full-time jobs in 2000. By 2010, the number of jobs dipped to 1,566,050, a decrease of 107,084. At the same time, total government jobs, whether state, local or federal, grew by nearly 28,000.

Sure, Connecticut could just cut corporate and income taxes and attract businesses that way, but then there’s no ability to reward political allies, and where’s the fun in that?

7 responses to “Why would anyone except a fool think it would?”

When Gov. Lowell Weicker instituted Connecticut’s first income tax in 1991, it was supposed to stabilize our state’s finances permanently. This act won for Weicker the 1992 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. But governments spend all the money they have plus as much else as they can get away with. So Connecticut’s income tax didn’t lead to balanced budgets. Instead it lead to a spending explosion which caused our present massive deficits. The tax increase also drove workers, jobs and population out of the state. (For liberals, this justifies…..more taxing and spending.)

In this episode, reality again intervenes to demonstrate that socialist, big government economic policies actually hurt those most in need.

Absolutely right, JRH – as the article itself makes clear (and dozens of others over the years), the politicians of all (almost all?) states are engaged in a race to the bottom. The fact that this doesn’t work has never slowed them. Quite discouraging.

Nice to see Hearst engage in some real journalism for once. Excellent investigative piece, showing how corporate welfare for the well-heeled lives on, courtesy of both parties. More sensible strategy would be direct investment in infrastructure, and building work force skills. The least effective routes are corporate tax cuts and wasteful subsidies that yield virtually no jobs.

You mean like the New Haven Springfield rail to nowhere? The New Britain-Hartford busway? Maintaining what we have would be a great idea but I don’t think we should be adding more such stuff while we refuse to take care of what’s already been built.

sorry d-bag…infrastructure spending is a cost center not a profit center…jobs should be created because a wanted product or service is demanding it not fictional infrastructure projects that make it appear that unemployment is down because we decided to repair a bridge which will keep people employed for the duration of the repairs….